News has reached this column of an alliance between Andrew Law, the chief of macro hedge fund Caxton Associates, and the BBC's business editor Robert Peston.

Law is bankrolling Peston’s schools charity, Speakers for Schools, after the pair were introduced by a “mutual friend” that Peston was reluctant to disclose — perhaps because this business arrangement was not due to be announced until early March.

Now the cat’s out of the bag, Peston tells Diary that Law “shares my determination to ensure that young people in state schools, like those we both attended, can benefit from access to inspirational speakers”.

Law made his investment from his charitable foundation, not the hedge fund, added Peston, who refused to confirm the size of donation — other than to say the sum "puts us on a firm financial footing for the next couple of years”. Generous, in other words.

Yet more drama at Independent Print Limited, publisher of The Independent and Evening Standard, as owner Alexander Lebedev prepares to stand trial for alleged hooliganism. The Russian oligarch’s son Evgeny, the day-to-day manager of the business, has revealed that — “when there is time” — he likes to break up his working day by reciting lines from the plays of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe with an acting coach. Can we expect to see Lebedev Jnr treading the West End boards in the lead role of his favourite play, Richard II? Only when there is time, of course.

Toys go out of the pram

Jessops’ Liverpool staff “thanked” their customers for shopping at Amazon as the camera retailer went bust.

Now the Amazon backlash continues. Brian Parrish, of Toys Direct, gets in touch to rage against the 15pc commission he and his fellow toy retailers pay the tax-efficient online store on every sale.

“Would you walk into Tesco and say, 'Here’s £1,000, put it in the till,’ because that is what we are effectively doing,” he tells me. Mr Parrish has also put his hard-hitting article on the topic — titled “Why are we all committing suicide?” — into the hands of his local MP, William Hague. On behalf of independent toy retailers everywhere, Diary hopes the Foreign Secretary passes on the petition to the relevant minister.

On the other side of the high street, however, retail board members are convinced their stocks are a “buy”. Over the past week, Kingfisher director Clare Chapman snapped up almost £20k-worth of shares in the home improvement business, while Dharmash Mistry, of Dixons Retail, bought almost 94,000 shares in the company at 26.66p, presumably encouraged by the Currys and PC World owner’s solid festive trading. Bloodbath, what bloodbath?

It’s a jungle in energy market

Given the title of the conference, it was perhaps inevitable that protesters would interrupt the Energy Markets in Turmoil summit at Bridewell Hall in the City. But the unrest didn’t deter SSE chief Ian Marchant from pulling out his safari holiday photos as he gave his presentation, in which he attacked his rivals by drawing analogies between the Big Six energy suppliers and big-game hunting.

Marchant compared Npower to an elephant leaving a mess wherever it went, Scottish Power to an unpredictable rhino, and EDF Energy to a leopard “that doesn’t change its spots”.

A case of the pot and the kettle perhaps, given Marchant’s unsympathetic stance on his own company’s price rises?

Lord North Street has made its name by managing the assets of “families with large fortunes”. Could the Royals’ funds be next to find their way to the private investment office? Its latest hiring is Edward Tollemache, a godson of the Prince of Wales and a Page of Honour to the Queen between 1988 and 1990, who joins from Fleming Family & Partners as “client portfolio manager”.

Bite worse than the bark

Professor Stella Fearnley’s remarks that Newfoundland dogs are “large lumbering canines that can’t bark and have webbed feet so they can swim away fast at the first sign of trouble” hit a nerve.

Prof Fearnley’s comments were intended to poke fun at the lumbering accounting establishment — but her joke was lost on the president of The Newfoundland Club, Carol Cooper, who made contact with this column to point out that the breed “most certainly have barks but also the sense to use them only when there is need”.

Cooper added: “As Prof Fearnley says, [the dogs] are formidable swimmers. Should she find herself in deep waters, she may be glad to know that any Newfoundland worth its salt will swim to her rescue, whether she deserves it or not.”